Derechos y Esperanza – Rights and Hope: ASU Law Civil Rights, Migration and Workplace Law Initiative

Join David Lopez and special guest host Evelyn Rangel Medina as we are joined by Erika Andiola, the political director of the National Day Labor Coalition, discusses how Arizona's anti-immigrant politics, as a young student, whose family had fled Mexico for safety, catalyzed her into becoming a nationally recognized immigrant justice and DREAMer advocate and leader.

This podcast is for educational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of Arizona State University or the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Nothing discussed should be considered legal advice or a substitute for professional counsel. All errors are the responsibility of the speaker.

In anticipation of the upcoming national interdisciplinary Derechos y Esperanza Low Wage Worker Conference, David is joined by guest co-host Evelyn Rangel-Medina, a Visiting Scholar at Arizona State University and Associate Professor at Temple University, David Seligman, Executive Director of Towards Justice in Denver, and Ruben Garcia,the Inaugural Leonard Hoshijo Endowed Chair in Labor Law at University of Hawaii, to explore how the law and emerging technologies such as AI, trap low-wage workers, often in poverty, subjecting them to the worst forms of exploitation but, at the same time, also may provide new paths overcome ongoing exploitation and allow a taste of the American Dream. A powerful conversation between litigators and scholars challenging silos and reimagining a more just workplace.

This podcast is for educational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of Arizona State University or the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Nothing discussed should be considered legal advice or a substitute for professional counsel. All errors are the responsibility of the speaker.

Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Interim Dean Angela M. Banks, a nationally-recognized immigration scholar, becomes our first two-time guest but with a different hat - that of a law dean. She discusses the current state of legal education, some of the challenges, and why, once you have committed to attend law school, what you need to do to make it the best experience possible.

This podcast is for educational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of Arizona State University or the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Nothing discussed should be considered legal advice or a substitute for professional counsel. All errors are the responsibility of the speaker.

In 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War, several states and a bipartisan coalition of Senators enacted the arduous Constitutional amendment process to enact the 26th Amendment, lowering the national voting age to 18 and protecting efforts to infringe the youth vote. Today, with massive political and technological change, many young people report being cynical, distrustful, or disengaged from the electoral process. Yael Bromberg, one of the leading Constitutional scholars and experts on the youth vote, is joined by Montserrat Arredondo Duran, Director of Arizona State's Ed Pastor Center for Politics and Public Service, are joined by Arizona State Junior Mikah Dyer and Arizona State Senior Katie Ritchie, to discuss the logistical and psychological barriers to voting and engagement, and to strategize how the younger generation can overcome these barriers and shape its future.

This podcast is for educational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of Arizona State University or the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Nothing discussed should be considered legal advice or a substitute for professional counsel. All errors are the responsibility of the speaker.

Following several high profile shooting by Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents, st the end of July, the ACLU filed 54 claims in 17 states and Washington, D.C. against the federal government on behalf of people who have allegedly suffered serious violence, abuse, and neglect at the hands of federal immigration agents. Our guests, two of the nation's premier civil rights/civil liberties lawyers, explain why it was critical for the ACLU to take this legal action at this moment, unprecedented in scope, to vindicate the rights of citizen and non-citizens alike.

This podcast is for educational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of Arizona State University or the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Nothing discussed should be considered legal advice or a substitute for professional counsel. All errors are the responsibility of the speaker.

In this episode, Professor Lopez talks to a diverse group of six of his former students from four different law schools about what to expect - really! - during the year and strategies for navigating it successfully and with - hopefully! - a smile on your face. Jacob Martinez, (Arizona State University College of Law alum, 2026), Nikki Fordey (Arizona State University College of Law alum, 2026), Elizabeth Butterworth, (Harvard Law School alum, 2022), Diane Solorio (Yale Law School 2027), Dr. Emahunn Campbell (Rutgers Law 2021), and Claudia Sanchez (Rutgers Law alum, 2025) answer the whole range of questions: Are you ready for law school? Is it hard to move to a different city for law school? Does the movie Paper Chase get it right about intimidating law school professors? What is imposter syndrome and how do you beat it back? Can you crash and burn on a cold call and survive? (Hint: Yes!) What about all the reading? Can you do well and build community? What about ableism in law school? Are there unique challenges facing first generation law students? Are the challenges facing returning second career and K-JD students the same? Should I take a clinic? I know law school can be stressful, what steps can I take to maintain wellness and mental health?

This podcast is for educational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of Arizona State University or the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Nothing discussed should be considered legal advice or a substitute for professional counsel. All errors are the responsibility of the speaker.

Reyna Montoya, Founder of Aliento, a Phoenix non-profit focused on supporting immigrant students and advocacy and Sal Macias, immigration lawyer and President of Los Abogados, Phoenix's Latino Bar Association, discuss how their lived experience of precariousness , including familial vulnerability, during Arizona's SB 1070 era, spurred an emerging youth immigrant rights activist consciousness and inspired later leadership roles supporting and advocating for immigrants and their families. Plus more on the connection between the World Cup and immigrant rights, the inspirational power of music.

This podcast is for educational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of Arizona State University or the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Nothing discussed should be considered legal advice or a substitute for professional counsel. All errors are the responsibility of the speaker.

Often the U.S. media fails to cover fully the full human impact of the increasingly punitive immigration system on our own communities, much less the reverberating humanitarian crisis in Mexico and other countries. For this episode, Professor Lopez is joined by two advocates, both originally from the U.S. working transnationally for non-profit humanitarian out of Mexico, Nicole Ramos, co-founder of Al Otro Lado working out of Tijuana, Mexico, and Tran Dang, founder of the Rhizome Center in Guadalajara, Mexico, who explain the full scope of this crisis, including for mixed-status families, resulting from (a) mass detention and deportation policies, and the (b) the effective administrative nullification of longstanding statutory pathways for amnesty and other forms of humanitarian relief, created consistent with international human rights law following World War II.

This podcast is for educational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of Arizona State University or the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Nothing discussed should be considered legal advice or a substitute for professional counsel. All errors are the responsibility of the speaker.

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, the Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at Ohio State University and nationally recognized scholar and contributor to the SCOTUS Blog, walks us through the Supreme Court's recent decisions on birthright citizenship, asylum, and Haitian and Syrian temporary protected status. Professor García Hernández highlights the broad and often uncritical deference the Court has given to the administration's immigration policies, explains the harmful real-world impacts of the asylum and TPS decisions and even, potential dangers on the horizons resulting from the Court's surprisingly narrow decision striking down the Birthright Citizenship executive order as unconstitutional. Our guest then ties the ironies of these decisions to the World Cup which has captivated much of the world's attention over this past summer.

This podcast is for educational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of Arizona State University or the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Nothing discussed should be considered legal advice or a substitute for professional counsel. All errors are the responsibility of the speaker.

As part of an ongoing series examining the increasingly costly and draconian immigration enforcement system from a range of angles (including family and religious conscience), David Lopez sits down with David Bier, Director of Immigration Studies and the Selz Foundation Chair in Immigration Policy at the Libertarian Cato Institute, to discuss our broken and immigration system. Our guest explains how the current system centered on criminalization and deportation has cost taxpayers billions, stripped millions of migrants of legal status, betrays traditional conservative principles of free markets, fiscal responsibility, and small government, and why he compared the plans for escalating mass deportations to "ethnic cleansing."

This podcast is for educational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of Arizona State University or the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Nothing discussed should be considered legal advice or a substitute for professional counsel. All errors are the responsibility of the speaker.